Comments on: Keating: The good and bad of ObamaCarehttp://libn.com/2012/03/21/keating-the-good-and-bad-of-obamacare/
The premier source of Long Island news and data on business, economic trends and the region’s robust entrepreneurial sector.Fri, 09 Dec 2016 20:21:25 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1By: Ken Greenberghttp://libn.com/2012/03/21/keating-the-good-and-bad-of-obamacare/comment-page-1/#comment-97800
Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:39:17 +0000http://libn.com/?p=72884#comment-97800While some aspects of health care reform are well intentioned, this is a behemoth that has only begun to grow. Politicians rarely talk about the causes for the rise in healthcare costs: we’re getting older and living longer, and there are more seniors every day as baby boomers age.

It’s certainly not because doctors are charging more for their services: Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies have steadily been lowering reimbursement rates in the hope that this would control medical costs. All it did was result in the extra, and sometimes unnecessary testing to make up for lost income.

Medicare is already a microcosm of Obamacare: everybody over 65 is in it. Yet it’s trillions (yes, trillions) of dollars underwater. One expert, at a Digital Health Conference in Manhattan last December explained it this way: “the problem with Medicare is that only seniors are on it, and they use the most care. If we got young people paying into and using Medicare, then the program would be balanced.” EXCEPT: young people DO pay in. Every working person pays Medicare withholding tax. Worse, the young folks paying in aren’t taking anything out – they can’t until they’re old enough to be on Medicare. Seniors on Medicare pay $1,158 per year. Contrast that with the true premium you pay for regular health insurance.

So, no easy solutions here. But I would rather take my chance on American ingenuity. The government should get out of the way except to create incentives for private insurers and businesses to come up with a better way. Do an X Prize for health care innovation.